One pawn shop in Bolingbrook agrees to changing policies
At the Feb. 27 Bolingbrook Village Board meeting, Mayor Roger Claar mentioned that he had spoken to the owners and managers of various licensed gun dealers in the village about their policies for selling firearms.
Establishments such as the Range at 355, Bass Pro Shops and Sterling & Knight Jewelry & Pawn all sell firearms, but Claar said they all abide strictly by the law. Claar specifically pointed out the conversations he’d had with the owner of the pawn shop in the week or so after the Feb. 14 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
Claar specifically wanted to request that the owner of the pawn shop not sell or pawn assault weapons and restrict purchases of firearms to those older than age 21.
“He’s agreed to quit dealing with them, at my request, at the village’s request, because of the issue nationally,” Claar said at the meeting.
The owner of the shop, J. Ford Sunderland, confirmed that the mayor spoke to him about the issue, and he said that Claar even asked for them to stop handling guns altogether.
“It is an important part of our business,” Sunderland said. “And so we talked about different policies that we have and came to an agreement with him on the different policies.”
Sunderland added that less than 20 percent of Sterling & Knight’s business deals with firearms, but there are some useful parts of the process he sees as valuable to overall safety.
The shop primarily deals with handguns but also has rifles and shotguns. Sunderland and Claar agreed to make it so that no one younger than age 21 could buy a gun. The shop also made it official that it would not sell ammunition, although that was basically the unofficial procedure before the Feb. 14 mass shooting.
But beyond what type of guns it handles, Sterling & Knight makes it a point to abide by the strict regulations implemented by state and federal law. Every gun, as well as all items it buys, sells and pawns, is thoroughly documented.
As with at any other federally licensed arms dealer, a buyer has to fill out and pass a background check. The owners also have to have their firearm owner’s identification card. Potential buyers are not even allowed to handle a gun unless they present the card.
“It’s something we adhere to pretty strongly because we’re so close to the school here,” said Israel Laboy, a Sterling & Knight employee. The pawn shop is across the street from Bolingbrook High School, but it was in that location well before the school was built.
Laboy also made the case for the usefulness of pawn shops, when it comes to making a record of guns in the area. When someone pawns their firearm, it’s a good way for them to get a loan if they don’t have easy access to banking. Moreover, the firearm’s information is logged, and the person needs to pass a background check to retrieve the weapon.
Making records of the firearms can help law enforcement, as it did one time at Sterling & Knight, in the event a firearm is used in a crime. It can be traced back to its owner with use of the pawn shop’s records.
As for any action taken at the local level on guns, there isn’t much to be done. Sunderland appreciated the way Claar approached the shop to see what could be done through the individual establishment’s policies, but the village also ended up doing one more thing.
Claar signed a letter addressed to Gov. Bruce Rauner and members of the state General Assembly representing Bolingbrook about a month after the Parkland shooting.
The letter asked for “reasonable and enforceable legislation for gun control.”
“Protecting the safety of the residents and visitors to Bolingbrook is our utmost concern,” Claar wrote in the letter. “Therefore, as the mayor and with support of the Village Board of Trustees, I urge you to consider our request to make the state of Illinois a safer place to live and work.”
Number of federally licensed gun dealers in Will County by municipality, according to the most recent data from November of 2017 from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.